I passed! I f*cking passed!! :-) It was more than a scrape at that. The pass mark was 55, I got 73. Now, that’s not so good; I normally get around 85, but even so, I passed! Wow.

Doing a language course, probably any course, at my age is odd in some ways. My fellow students are mostly decades younger than me. A good proportion of the teachers are from their generations, too. So I’m almost always the old exception in the room full of intelligent, motivated young people. Fortunately, my sense of humour has me fit in.

This time, though, I was the only student for most of the course. My tutor was a young woman who did a grand job, and I appreciate her work. It wasn’t easy for her; I’m not very good at languages, but she got me through the syllabus successfully. I would have welcomed other students so I could have had a better idea of my progress, or rather lack of it, but that wasn’t in either of our hands.